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What are the secrets of the top homoeopaths?

The top homoeopathic prescribers didn’t get that way by accident. They didn’t get to be super prescribers because they caught the lecture on tissue salts, or because a case of rabies turned up at the college clinic or because they read the Organon in German. Neither did that get that way by taking more cases than any of their colleagues, though practice has a lot to do with it.

They got that way by falling in love: with the homoeopathic materia medica.

You see, lovers see only beauty in the beloved; they see no flaws. As for their own strange state, they see nothing wrong with that at all, despite their eyes developing an excited look any time they are around homoeopathic books, people or medicines. They get distinctly restless around extremely neat people, or kids who search for pins, or people who see things — I mean see things. Their eyes become bright and glassy when they hear people say things like ‘Come on everyone: hurry!’, and ‘I know it’s an awful thing to say but I feel like stabbing that woman.’ and ‘All day I’ve felt as though this is my last day, and that I’ll die at midnight.’

Only a lover of materia medica can appreciate that kind of talk for what it is. Only a lover can know the exquisite sense of knowing that comes with correct remedy selection.

We homoeopaths love to classify people: we could classify them twenty-four seven. Come on, don’t deny it. And if you’re one of those homoeopaths who shows no interest when the homoeoapath you’re with says, ‘Ooh look, there’s a perfect Palladium,’ then maybe you need to change professions. (Hey, perhaps you could take up orthodox medicine — just a thought).

This classifying habit is the prefect habit for the young homoeopath to get into. And that’s because what the elite homoeopath aims for is an b-materia medical. That’s like an e-materia medica, only it’s stored in the brain. He or she doesn’t want to memorise the materia medica it (the brain doesn’t work that way); but he or she does want to be able to access it. And that’s where mnemonics come in.

Mnemonics are access routes to the memory. Remedy pictures are mnemonics, so are patients. And so are the things that stick in the mind about your beloved. Like whenever I think of Palladium (I might as well stick with it now) I think of that particular way Palladiums have of ‘occupying’ a chair, not sitting, but owning a chair. That’s a mnemonic, and it triggers all kinds of other memories about that remedy. It’s a cascade, a lovely waterfall of the heart. (As you’ll see I think there’s a lot more heart than mind to homoeopathy).

So if you’ve fallen out of love with the homoeopathic materia medica, I recommend falling back in again. And I can think of no better way than by reading Kent’s Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica, an oldie but still a goody. Go on: off you go.

And when you come back, we’ll have a chat about the greatest issue facing the homoeopath today.